All posts tagged: hillary clinton

Ten days after an inauguration Trump christened a “National Day of Patriotic Devotion,” in a definite nod to the antics of the worst Kremlin puppets everywhere that came before him, it is a good time to look back and reflect on the horrors of the first ten days and envision a path forward. Nominally and historically, such questions about the type of administration in the past emerge after 100 days, an arbitrary marker to be sure, but thinking people everywhere observing America’s homegrown terror in the form of a poorly dressed, wildly insecure, overly bronzed lunatic are settling into the reality that we might not have the luxury of so much time. World War III has already begun but most are still sleeping and do not see the danger, the mushroom clouds lingering on the horizon. Let us begin by asking a question that is inspired by the demagogue Lenin, lifted from the title of a mediocre novel by Nikolai Chernychevsky as the first rumblings of dissatisfaction within Imperial Russia’s aristocracy stirred: what is …

This week saw the Obama administration distance itself from a U.S. partner of 30 years, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, as street demonstrations transformed into street clashes between anti-government protesters and pro-government supporters in Cairo and other Egyptian cities. The consequence of nearly 30 years of ruling Egypt with an iron fist and over $1 billion in security assistance a year from the U.S., the revolution on the streets of Egypt appears to have taken Washington by surprise. Just last week, Vice-President Joe Biden stated that Mubarak was not a dictator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Sunday morning shows that the longstanding relationship was something the Americans were balancing closely with contemporary events. By mid-week White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs bolstered Obama’s demand that “change must begin now,” more of a faint echo to Obama’s own presidential campaign of 2008 than it was reminiscent of the last time an American president issued an ultimatum to a dictator, by suggesting that “now means yesterday.” In between last week and this week, Foreign Policy ran …

Amanda Rivkin Verve Photo: The New Breed of Documentary Photographers December 13, 2010 Amanda Rivkin (b.1984, USA) is currently based in Brooklyn while completing a master’s degree in security studies: terrorism and sub-state violence at the Georgetown University Graduate School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C. Previously based in her hometown, Chicago, where she travels frequently, her work has appeared on the front pages of Le Monde, The New York Times, and The Washington Post and Courrier Japan, The Financial Times, Foreign Policy, and The London Sunday Times Magazine. She received a Young Explorers Grant from the Expeditions Council of the National Geographic Society to travel to Azerbaijan, Georgia, and eastern Turkey for a project, “Exploring the Evolving Oil Economy: the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline,” in 2010. She is a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and Sarah Lawrence College. About the Photograph: “This photo was taken on a beach in the Bibi Heybat section of southern Baku, Azerbaijan on the 4th of July, 2010, the same day Hillary Clinton visited the oil …

If you are searching for meaning in the evolving cablegate scandal, I am not sure there is one. Misha Glenny reminds us that sometimes it is enough to be reminded of old jokes from communist times: “We cannot predict the future, but the past is changing before our very eyes.” Speaking of which – U.S.-Russia in the immediate post-Cold War: “The cables: what really counts,” Foreign Policy WikiLeaked Blog By David Hoffman, author of The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia, an excellent book I was up many cold, late nights in Poland several years ago reading, and former Washington Post Moscow bureau chief in the 1990s on concerns expressed in cables about Russia’s nuclear security in the aftermath of the break-up of the Soviet Union. What a time it was. Today, we learn the U.S. State Department was concerned by Lula and Sarkozy’s relationship, fretting it might cost Boeing a significant contract: “Lula es el “formidable obstáculo” para que la estadounidense Boeing renueve la Fuerza Aérea de Brasil,” El Pais [in Spanish] …

December 2, 2010: “El ‘antiamericano’ Garzón tuvo especial seguimiento,” El Pais [in Spanish] Published under a headline on the homepage of the website, “El ‘antiamericano’ Baltasar Garzon” – photographs of Baltasar Garzon on Amanda Rivkin PhotoShelter archive. “Mafia Analogy for Aliyev Dynasty: Ilham Aliyev and Corleone Brothers (Wikileaks),” AzeriReport ” In US diplomatic cables newly released by Wikileaks, Aliyev clan’s rule over Azerbaijan is compared to mafia, specifically to the Corleones family in the famous ‘Godfather’ movie series. Ilham Aliyev himself ‘described alternately as a mix of “Michael” and “Sonny.”‘ Maintaining ‘a clever, realistic foreign policy’ that he inherited from his father, he reminds of the cold-calculated alliance builder Michael Corleone. But his domestic policies, with crude retaliation against even minor challenges to his authority and criticism, resemble the ‘brash, impulsive’ Sonny Corleone.” related posts: “Mafia Analogies for the Aliyev Family in WikiLeaks/U.S. State Department Cablegate: Is He Michael or Sonny?” Includes links to relevant background articles and blog posts to understanding the Aliyev/Corleone cable: “Donkey Video,” Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizade/OL! “Shown Trial,” Fortnight …

Shown Trial Fortnight Journal November 26, 2010 What happens to the Vaclav Havels of the world when their velvet becomes bloody? Azerbaijan, after its 2005 push for openness and reform in government, found itself somewhere among Budapest in 1956, Prague in 1968 and Poland in 1981. A human tragedy began; replete with obligatory (in the post-Soviet world) sideshows, show trials, political arrests and imprisonments of intellectuals—followed by their occasional, conditional release. When I met Emin Milli, one such Azeri prisoner of conscience, he was on leave from prison in Azerbaijan this summer for one week to attend his father’s funeral and mourn his passing. He sat with his wife, Leyla, and mother, Natella, in a cousin’s home, surrounded by friends and family in the village of Boyuk Oyrad, in his native Neftcala region of Azerbaijan. Leyla would later remark to Radio Free Europe how unfortunate it was that “someone had to die, so that we may talk.” Among such circles of dissent, history has provided for the emergence of several archetypes. Some dissenters are reluctant …

Yana Paskova on Henri Cartier-Bresson By KERRI MACDONALD AND AMANDA RIVKIN August 25, 2010 12:00pm Yana Paskova, 28, was born in Bulgaria, raised in Chicago and is now based in New York. She has worked across the United States and in Eastern Europe, Russia and Asia. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, The Chicago Tribune and Time Magazine. Amanda Rivkin’s conversation with Ms. Paskova has been edited and condensed. Q. How was this picture taken? A. This photo was originally meant to be a part of a square-format portrait project, but remained in my general campaign work long after the idea. I took this photo in the summer of 2007, an opaque moment when it came to predicting who would become the next president of the U.S. Until the brief instant Hillary Clinton stepped under the shadows of a tree to talk with potential supporters, I had filled a long day of campaign events chasing any facial expression or moment that would birth some sort of different photo. But with the …